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In 1853, United States Highway 66 followed in the wake of the nation's first trans-Mississippi migration.
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The first leg of the ocean-to-ocean highway that the National Old Trails Association proposed in 1912 originated in Washington, DC and traced the Cumberland Road, a well-established historic avenue, to St. Louis.
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The 1920s were the first boom years for the automobile.Route 66 was the result of America's infatuation with rapid mobility, mass transportation, and technological change.
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From Missouri, the highway followed the Santa Fe Trail to Albuquerque and Santa Fe before taking a more southerly course through Arizona to Flagstaff, the gateway to the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff's pioneer lumberman, Matthew J. Riordan, detailed the route's final leg that most closely approximates the 1927 orientation of U.S. Highway 66.
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During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of farm families, displaced from the Dust Bowl, made their way west along Route 66 to California, following what John Steinbeck called “The Mother Road” in his vivid portrait, The Grapes of Wrath. -
In the 1930s, drought and falling crop prices drove thousands of rural midwestern families to leave their farms and follow Route 66 to California to find work.
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Though the 1956 Federal Interstate Act spelled the beginning of the end for Route 66, it wasn't until nearly 30 years later that the highway was officially laid to rest.
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In 1960 R.J. Bob Lee opened the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, on Route 66, the "mother road" where you find the 72oz steak challenge.
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In 1964-less than a decade after the Interstate Act--part of California's section of Route 66 was decommissioned. The road's endpoint was moved for the time being from Santa Monica to Pasadena.
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Tulsa’s premier Route 66 attraction was the giant Blue Whale sculpture, in Catoosa, northeast of Tulsa, on the old road from I-44 exit 240. The park, built as an animal-themed tourist attraction in the 1970s by Hugh Davis, a curator at the Tulsa Zoo, closed down long ago and was left to crumble. Unlike many other long-suffering Route 66 landmarks, however, the Blue Whale has been restored by the family of its original creators (with some help from the Hampton Inn). -
In 1975, the rest of California's Route 66 was decommissioned, meaning the highway officially ended at the Arizona Border.
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In 1983 the government paid $33 million to buy Times Beach in St. Louis and tear it down, and 15 years later, the cleanup was declared complete. The 419 acres of what was once Times Beach has since been reopened as the Route 66 State Park.
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The roads were no longer needed and eventually were no longer upgraded. It took a while, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed was Williams, AZ, in 1984, and the road officially ceased to exist the year after it was decertified.
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Route 66 has reflected a convergence of practical necessity and outlandish hucksterism, representing a conveyance to the mythical Frontier, the exotic other, and even the Promised Land. Yet since being decommissioned in 1985, and more so in recent years, a phantasmagoria called ‘‘Route 66’’ has layered itself upon older strata of an all-weather highway, road of migration, soldier’s trail, and postwar tourist highway.
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June 27, 1985, the iconic Route 66 signs were taken down, and names began fading from road maps.
